The twice-yearly ritual has roots in cost-cutting strategies of the late 19th century. A bill to make daylight saving time permanent has re-emerged in Congress.
By Alan Yuhas in the NYT
Hello. You may be here to learn when is daylight saving time, or what is the time that we’re saving, or why does daylight saving time even exist.
Hopefully, this will answer those questions, and maybe a few more that hadn’t crossed your mind, like what do the railroad companies of the 19th century have to do with it and whether golf course owners have an interest in your sleep habits.
Here goes.
When is it?
Unlike other, easier-to-remember federal events, like the Fourth of July, in the United States the clock change is tied to a roving day: Since 2007, it has taken place on the second Sunday of March, when clocks spring forward an hour, and the first Sunday of November, when they go back. (In 2023, those dates are March 12 and Nov. 5. The clocks spring forward again on March 10, 2024.)
In Britain, France and Germany, the clocks change on the last Sunday in March, and the last Sunday in October. (In 2023, those dates are March 26 and Oct. 29. The clocks spring forward again in these countries on March 31, 2024.)
American lawmakers in 1966, writing in the Uniform Time Act, decided that the right time of day for this shift was “2 o’clock antemeridian,” better known as 2 a.m.
What is it?
To farmers, daylight saving time is a disruptive schedule foisted on them by the federal government; a popular myth even blamed them for its existence. To some parents, it’s a nuisance that can throw bedtime into chaos. To the people who run golf courses, gas stations and many retail businesses, it’s great.
“When it’s dark or there are limited hours after work, people tend to go straight home and stay there,” said Jeff Lenard, a spokesman for the National Association of Convenience Stores, an industry group. “When it’s lighter, they are more likely to go out and do something, whether it’s in the neighborhood, a local park or some other experience. And that behavior shift also drives sales, whether at a favorite restaurant or the local convenience store.”
OK, if it wasn’t farmers, whose idea was this?
The idea is to move an hour of sunlight from the early morning to the evening, so that people can make more use of daylight. Benjamin Franklin is often credited as the first to suggest it in the 18th century, after he realized he was wasting his Parisian mornings by staying in bed. He proposed that the French fire cannons at sunrise to wake people up and reduce candle consumption at night.
Over the next 100 years, the Industrial Revolution laid the groundwork for his idea to enter government policy. For much of the 1800s, time was set according to the sun and the people running the clocks in every town and city, creating scores of conflicting, locally established “sun times.” It could be noon in New York, 12:05 in Philadelphia and 12:15 in Boston.
This caused problems for railway companies trying to deliver passengers and freight on time, as nobody agreed whose time it was. In the 1840s, British railroads adopted standard times to reduce confusion. American counterparts soon followed.
“There was the threat of federal intervention in all of this, so the railroads decided they were going to police themselves,” said Carlene Stephens, a curator at the National Museum of American History. Scientists were also urging a standardized system for marking time, she said.
Living as far north as we do, I have thought that the twice a year change was a painful necessity–particularly when folks talk about year round DST. At our latitude we simply don’t have enough “daylight” to “save” during the winter. During WWII I when I was in Omaha (toward the west edge of Central Time) the winter sunrise was around 9:00. But there is no denying that the ST/DST & vice versa changes do play havoc with our minds. Joan used to dread the first rehearsal of the Northwest Chamber Chorus after the change each season.